Early Internet Art and Its Others:


net.art, Net Art, Internet Art, Post-Internet art, nyet.art? For next week, read these three essays:

Introduction to Net Art (1994-1999)

Fluidities and Oppositions among Curators, Filter Feeders, and Future Artists

Net Results

In addition to reading the three essays above, begin surveying these very early Internet art exhibitions relevant to the course including:

  1. adaweb
  2. Digital Studies: Being in Cyberspace
  3. beyond interface
  4. turbulence
  5. net_condition
  6. Desktop Is
  7. Whitney Biennial 2000 & 2002
  8. tate modern
  9. SFMOMA's e.space
  10. Rhizome's ARTBASE
  11. Art Entertainment Network
  12. 010101
  13. Histories of Internet Art: Fictions and Factions (HIAFF)

Pay close attention to our own student-built website, Histories of Internet Art, and think about issues related to our 2.0 upgrade of the site.

For your next 500-word blog entry, address the three essays above as well as entertain the following questions as best you can:

  1. What is Internet art?
  2. What are some of the themes you see being addressed in the earliest works of net art?
  3. How do we exhibit it?
  4. How do we curate it? In fact, what does it mean to curate works on net art in an online networked environment?
  5. How does it relate to the traditional gallery and museum culture?
  6. What is Post-Internet art? How does it differ from earlier versions of net art?
  7. Is the Internet where the most exciting forms of avant-garde practice will flourish into the 21st century? Or is it too now passé? What about hybrid practices?
  8. Where does the Internet fit into a more conventional gallery oriented studio practice?
  9. Is there a viable way to monetize this kind of work? How? If not, what are the options besides making money off it, i.e. what's the incentive? [hint: some of these issues are addressed in "Introduction to Net.Art: 1994-1999")

These are just starter questions. I invite original thoughts and threads on issues that you find pertinent that are not mentioned above.

Be sure to include links to two works of net art that you find of interest i.e. that you would consider curating in your own online exhibition, and briefly discuss why they are attractive to your developing curatorial sensibility.

As always, the blog entry is due on Sunday at 5:30 PM.